After significant consideration, I have decided not to attend this event. It is a great deal of time outside my classroom; moreover, it is abundantly clear that the guiding principles of the Town Hall are antithetical to my own. As a veteran public school teacher with a long record of success in the classroom despite the institutional challenges placed upon me, my students and our community, I have outlived a great deal of "education reform", any number of organizations explaining that it's not about the money, and the daily denigration of my profession by people with less experience and far less education than I have.
It is clear to me that the Town Hall will prioritize these voices. Since I do not believe that there is any interest in opposing viewpoints, I do not feel it is in anyone's best interest that I attend.
I think that NBC has the power and ability to make sure that audience malcontents like myself keep their malcontented mouths far, far away from microphones. I strongly doubt that I could get through "Waiting for the End of Public Education" without some snarky comments. I mean, I couldn't get through "Contact" without some snarky comments, and I had to leave "Titanic" forty minutes in. So I would be a known problem entity prior to the teacher panel.
The sad thing is that with ten years in public K-12, I HAVE outlived several reforms/programs, all of which were supposed to...well, do something:
- Reading First
- II/USP (aka "March of the Consultants")
- Small Schools (Gates Foundation iteration)
- Edison Schools
- Jr. 6th grade/moving 6th out of middle school/moving 6th back
- 20:1 class size reduction (SFUSD not included YAY)
- Full day Kindergarten (SFUSD not included)
- I could go on forever and ever but just making this list makes me jaded.
If only Reading First were truly over...I'd probably still be working at Denver Public Schools, instead of sticking it to The Man on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe there really is a silver lining on every cloud!
Love your blog :)
--TeacherSabrina
Reading My Buddies' Contracts First will never really go away, I don't think.
ReplyDeleteWhen it came in, my school had politely declined the money in favor of continuing with a bilingual track. Over the next few months our district decided that we didn't really mean it.
So that year, we switched over to all English in all classrooms, in January. The old bilingual classes got half a year of Open Court (the first half), thereby making it impossible to master grade level content in either language. So it was less Reading First and more Prop 227 First.